As an avowed atheist living among a sea of believers (both locally and on the Internet), I have spent a lot of time discussing my beliefs (or lack thereof, as the case may be). The purpose of this blog is not to prove the non-existence of God or "de-convert" anybody from their faith, but simply to preserve some of these discussions and allow me to flesh them out through the process of writing them down, as well as to share them with anybody who might be interested in reading them.

Friday, March 20, 2015

Top Ten Misconceptions about Atheists - Part Two

Misconception Number Two -- Atheists Have the Burden of Proof to Show that God Doesn’t Exist

It used to be that theists would
claim that science and religion operated in completely different realms.Science deals with “how” things work and religion
deals with “why” the universe is the way it is.Science deals with things that can be proven via evidence, whereas religion
is all about faith in things that neither can be, nor need to be, proven and
for which no evidence is required.And
certainly there are still plenty of theists who feel this way today.

There has been a shift in recent
years, however, as science has made more and more inroads into solving many of
the “deep” questions that were once thought to be solely the domain of religion.Where did we come from?Why are we here?What happens to us after we die?In addition, people have started to realize
that many religious claims, such as miracles, the historical accuracy of
scriptures, etc., should be verifiable with evidence.As a result, people are much less willing to
accept religious teachings based solely on faith and are expecting theists to
shoulder the burden of proof that science requires whenever anybody makes a
positive claim.

Some theists do attempt to provide “evidence”
to support their beliefs, but many try to avoid the issue by claiming that
atheists can’t prove their assertion either that there is no God.It’s not enough, these theists claim, for
atheists to simply claim not to believe in God – they somehow have to prove God
doesn’t exist, or admit that he does.

Sadly, that’s simply not the way
science or the burden of proof works.Yes, we ask theists to provide justification for their belief in God
since they are making affirmative statements that contradict observable
reality.That’s how science works – you make
a claim, you provide evidence as to why your claim is true.

Atheists, however, are not necessarily
claiming that God doesn’t exist.All we
are claiming is that theists haven’t given us any good reasons to believe that
he exists.We don’t need to prove a
negative.

Having said that, though, I will
say that with regard to specific descriptions of god contained in various
religious texts and worshiped by specific religions, it is rather easy to “disprove”
those gods in the same way you could easily disprove the existence of an adult
African elephant living under my desk as I type his.All you have to do is consider what evidence
would have to be there in order for the claim to be true, and if the evidence
is missing than the claim is disproved. So, while no atheist can possibly disprove the existence of an immaterial being who exists outside of space and time and whose existence, by definition, cannot even be proved in the first place, it is actually pretty easy to disprove the existence of a being who is described as having specific attributes, interacting with humanity in specific ways, making specific promises, etc. When presented with this fact, however, the theists who require atheists to "prove that God doesn't exist" always seem to fall back on the other type of "god" (i.e., the god that bears no relationship to the one they claim to actually worship) and then say, "HA! You can't prove that no concept of God could possibly exist, therefore I win!"

*sigh*

Bait and switch. It's like saying that, just because I can't prove that there is no intelligent life elsewhere in the universe (which I can't, of course, since the universe is such a vast place), I therefore can't prove that a particular grainy photo doesn't actually depict an alien spacecraft, despite the fact that it bears a striking resemblance to an aluminum pie tin, the string holding it up is visible and the person who took the photo has admitted in the past to creating hoax UFO pictures.